Effect of Lactobacillus acidophilus supernatants on body weight and leptin expression in rats

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Lactobacillus </it>extracts and supernatants have been used as probiotics in human and veterinary medicine for their ability to enhance wound healing and immunity. Previous data from our laboratory demonstrated that <it>Lactobacillus </it>supernatant (LS) stimulated wound healing, angiogenesis and proliferation of embryonic cells after topical application. This current study shows that LS after its administration into the cerebral ventricles of male rats exerts systemic effects.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The right lateral cerebral ventricle of young male rats was accessed through intracerebroventricular cannulation (ICV) under anesthesia and aseptic conditions. One group of control rats received saline solution, a second control group received 0.8 M lactic acid solution (to control for acidity of LS), and a third group received LS. The animals were sacrificed 12, 24, 48, 96 and 120 hours after the injection. Selected tissues were collected, fixed in 10% buffered formalin and used for immunohistochemistry and <it>in situ </it>hybridization. Other tissues were frozen and extracted for immunoblotting</p> <p>Results</p> <p>LS-injected animals had a slight decrease in body weight when compared to their initial weight and to both control groups. Using immunohistochemistry and <it>in situ </it>hybridization leptin expression was studied in multiple brain sections and peripheral adipose tissue of control and LS-injected rats. Strong cytoplasmic stain was observed by both techniques in neurons of the cerebral cortex, thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus and, to lesser degree, in the cells of the choroid plexus in the LS-injected rats. Control animals demonstrated much less intense staining in neurons located in the same regions using immunohistochemistry and almost no staining with <it>in situ </it>hybridization technique. Adipose tissue exhibited slight presence of leptin in LS-treated animals. In contrast no immunohistochemical staining for GM-CSF and TNFα was observed in brains from control and treated rats. Western blotting showed mild increase in leptin and leptin receptors in intestines and retroperitoneal adipose tissues of LS-injected rats.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study demonstrates that direct administration of LS into rat CNS leads to a decrease in body weight of rats and an increase in the expression of leptin in specific areas of the brain and retroperitoneal adipose tissue.</p

Subliminal stimuli in the near absence of attention influence top-down cognitive control

Recent research has shown that visual stimuli can influence cognitive control functions, even if subjects are unaware of the identity of the stimuli. However, in those previous studies, subjects actively attended to the location of the subliminal stimuli. Here we assessed the role of endogenous spatial attention in such paradigms. We required subjects to quickly prepare for one of two numerical judgment tasks on the basis of the direction of motion in patches of moving dots presented in cued spatial locations. We found that irrelevant motion patches presented in the uncued spatial locations also influenced task performance. Motion in the uncued patches was weak and did not affect the perception of the cued patches. Further analyses suggested that the effect of priming by the uncued stimuli was present even for subjects who could only discriminate such stimuli at chance level. Three additional experiments confirmed that subjects paid minimal attention to the uncued locations, in that the subjects could not perform simple discriminations of conjunctions of features in those locations

Reaktoren für spezielle technisch-chemische Prozesse: Mikrostrukturreaktoren

Mikrostrukturreaktoren haben sich mittlerweile zu einem wichtigen Bestandteil der Prozessintensivierung in der chemischen Verfahrenstechnik entwickelt. Zudem sind sie zu wichtigen Werkzeugen für die Entwicklung neuer Synthesen und die Prozessentwicklung im Labor geworden. Die wesentlichen Charakteristiken, die sich aufgrund der Miniaturisierung ergeben, werden zusammengefasst und Entwicklungen für den industriellen Einsatz und die Prozessentwicklung beschrieben